Slept, But Not Well-Rested
by HopelesslyUnfinished
Summary: One-shot. The Cloak of Levitation was drawn to Doctor Stephen Strange, but what caused the powerful connection?


Mrs. Strange rocked her infant son in her arms gently, "Do you have a blanket I can set him on while we make dinner?"

Her mother-in-law crossed to the linen closet thoughtfully. She knew exactly which blanket to get for her small grandson before she even opened the door. She reached onto the top shelf and felt for the familiar texture. She pulled it out, holding it close as she walked back to the living space.

"Mom, how old is that thing?"

"It's as still as soft and sturdy as the day I got it from my grandmother. He's going to love it. His father used to crawl around on this one himself."

She shook out the odd blanket and it floated onto the floor perfectly flat. Her daughter-in-law smiled at the familiar pattern she'd seen in photographs of her husband as a child and set her son in the middle so that he couldn't escape too quickly. He had just started to roll over and she wanted to make sure he was safe in case he figured out how to crawl as quickly as he'd learned everything else so far.

She followed her mother into the kitchen, stopping briefly to look back. Stephen had already rolled onto his stomach and was engrossed in pinching and pointing at all the odd symbols decorating the cloth. She chuckled at his giggles of discovery and went into the adjacent room from which she could keep an eye on him from a distance.

* * *

The sorcerer flew through the darkness as fast as his powers would let him travel. His pursuers gaining slowly but surely; their malevolent energy pulsing nearer with every breathe he stole. He hadn't known they'd been trapped in this realm and, by passing through, had awoken their bloodlust for magical energy. He knew if he could at least get through the gate at the end of the abyss, he would return safely to his reality on Earth. He urged his cloak to fly as fast as it could in his mind and fed as much of his power to supplement its own ancient enchantments as he could.

The beasts were beginning to grow more silent as they neared. If he had not been able to detect their dark energy, he would have succumbed to the dread that they would devour him. The cloak sensed this most primal fear and the desire to escape, feeding it into a sudden burst of speed from its threads. The sorcerer was flung through the gate, which began closing just a talon dug into his relic. He slammed into the wall of the temple and the gate immediately sealed the dark beasts into their realm of banishment. The pain coursed through his body as the cloak roughly assisted him to walk to his room; half carrying him to rest on his simple bed.

* * *

"Stephen, are you alright?"

He woke up suddenly, full of unbridled fear from the terrible nightmares he'd been having. His mother worriedly leaned into her eight-year-old son's room. She'd heard him crying out while he slept again, and she was beginning to worry about him on a nightly basis. He'd often gone to school looking like he'd never fallen asleep and his teacher had sent home a letter expressing concerns.

She walked over to sit next to him on his bed. He flinched slightly when she pushed the hair out of his eyes, the nightmares still fresh in his mind. She was concerned to see her outgoing son so reticent and introspective. His eyes were glazed over and was he staring unfocused at something unseen.

"Stephie, what have you been dreaming about? I heard you shouting."

He looked up at her like it was the first time he'd noticed she was there. He shook his head and tried to casually wipe the trails of tears from his cheeks instead of answering.

"Has your father been letting you watch scary movies again? I told him not to let you."

Stephen threw himself back on the pillow and shook his head again. There was nothing he'd ever seen in a movie that could compare to the nightmares he'd been having, and he didn't know how to begin to describe them to anyone, even his mom. The least he could do was not make trouble for his dad.

His mother watched her miserable son for a moment and then left the room briefly, telling him she'd be right back. He sat up again, the nightmares quickly replaced by an innate curiosity. He heard her open the closet in the hallway, pull something out, and close the door again. She had something in her hands that she brought to the side of his bed. When she unfolded it, he recognized it as the blanket his grandmother had given him as a baby. He watched her with confusion as she replaced his usual blanket with this one; its familiar fabric feeling cool on his legs. She tossed the other blanket in his hamper and returned to sitting on the bed next to him. She leaned in conspiratorially and he was compelled to shift closer to her.

"I don't know if you know this, but this blanket has been in our family for generations. You got it from your grandmother, who got it from her grandmother, who supposedly got it from her grandfather. No one is entirely sure how old it is or why it hasn't fallen apart yet."

He whispered back, "But what does it have to do with my nightmares?"

She smiled slyly, as if she was letting him in on a big secret.

"This blanket has held of all the Strange family members going back through time. So even if you still have nightmares, when you wake up you'll be wrapped in the protection of every family member you've ever had holding you warm and tight."

He traced a finger across a row of squares. He knew his mother was just trying to comfort him, but a small part of him wondered if it could really help.

"How's a blanket going to do that?"

"Magic." She said with a motherly gleam in her eye. "You can also come and get me whenever you need me, even if it's the middle of the night."

He nodded, showing he understood, and nestled down under the heirloom. While he doubted that magic had anything to do with it, he was comforted by his mom's thoughtfulness. His mother gave him a kiss on the forehead, tucked him in, and left, whispering a final goodnight.

When she got up the next morning to wake him for school, he was curled into the blanket like a cocoon; sleeping peacefully and deeply. She decided he was getting a day off school, because nothing in the universe was going to compel her to wake him from at least one good night's sleep.

* * *

The sorcerer woke to sunlight pouring into his room. He blinked, attempting to recognize his surroundings. It had been so long since he'd returned to his home, seeing his distantly familiar bedroom was a welcome sight after his long ordeal. He took his time reacquainting himself with his home, noting the need for dusting and sweeping. He felt his hunger pains growing stronger and left the building to gather whatever fruits he could find from his wildly overgrown gardens. He could tell from the state of disarray that he had been gone longer than expected; however, he did not have the energy yet to venture further than his basic needs at the moment. The variety plants he had left behind bore several different edible products.

He returned to his dusty living quarters and began to eat from his mostly full basket. He stilled when he heard a loud flapping noise getting closer to him. It sounded as if a flag hung in violent winds was approaching him, so he turned, bracing for an attack, even in his depleted state. Hovering in front of him was his relic, the Cloak of Levitation, in all its glory except for the section beneath where his left arm would usually rest. The section was flapping more violently than the rest of the cloak, as though it were overcompensating for the loss of part of the lining where the beast had torn some away.

The sorcerer grimaced an apology to the semi-sentient fabric and pulled open the garment to get a better look. An large swath had been completely torn away, leaving ragged strands dangling from what remained.

"Ah, my friend, it looks as though we need to patch you up. I can't exactly sneak up on anyone with you flying so frantically."

The cloak pulled itself out of his hands at the impudence of his statement. He chuckled and grabbed another apple to eat as he and the cloak headed to the temple's linen storage. Surely there must be a suitable material to patch the cloak among the many sacred cloths. He entered a room full of shelves lined with all manner of fabric fashioned into a variety of purposes along with plenty of reams of uncut cloth. He scoured a cabinet for a needle and thread before combing through the room for a fabric of similar weight and color. He finally found a delicate floral pattern that wouldn't stand out too much and was labeled as being spun from wool shorn from the lambs from Asgard. He placed it on the desk and waved the cloak nearer, trying to judge the size of the piece he would need. Instead, the cloak flew up to a distant corner of the room, deliberately out of arms reach.

"What, you don't like flowers? It's rather close to the one you have now."

The ripple ran through the cloak that the sorcerer acknowledged as disgust.

"Well, then how about you choose a fabric. You're the one who has to live with it."

The cloak timidly lowered from the ceiling and began to wind its way through the reams and cabinets. The sorcerer sat to finish his apple and amused himself by observing the cloth peruse the room. It acted as if it were interacting with friends, neighbors, or even a few enemies, even though none of the other fabrics exhibited any signs of sentience. Finally, the cloak returned to him, its collar wilting with dejection. It used its right corner to point to its own remains of the lining.

"I'm sorry, my friend, but we don't have any more of your original weave. It's probably been millennia since you were woven, and any other pieces most likely have not survived time as well as you."

The sorcerer was beginning to wonder if he should have had more interaction with fully sentient beings in his travels considering he was talking to his own clothing now. He watched as the cloak silently begged him to see if there was some magical way to find more of his pattern.

"Alright, I will look as soon as I have regained some of my strength. I owe you at least that much for saving my life."

* * *

"Stephie, there was nothing you could have..."

He slammed the door in his mother's face. How could he have been so stupid as to leave his sister alone? And now she was... gone.

The young man began to throw anything he could get his hands on in his old room. Seething, he destroyed his childhood toys and unceremoniously knocked the pieces on the floor. He blindly stabbed a football with a penknife and threw it into his old desktop, which shattered instantly. He tore his old band posters and tossed his chair across the room.

He turned to throw himself on his bed and froze at the sight of the old blanket he'd been considering packing to take back to medical school with him. His nightmares had started again, and he had been considering that it might be comforting to have. He soured at the thought that he deserved any comfort and picked up the blanket with the intention to tear it apart. The moment he felt a single thread pop, he felt all the strength of his fury leave him and he stood there with the pattern seeming to glare at him. He sobbed and tossed it into the trash can, pushing back the temptation to fold into its familiarity and comfort.

* * *

The sorcerer sank into the locating spell, allowing the energy of the cloak wrapped around him to reach out for similar patterns of energy in their earthly realm. It was like he was engrossed in the ebb-and-flow of everything and nothing at once, touching the energy of everything in his path, but never settling. He timelessly felt his way over continents, seas, people of all kinds, and slowly began to feel himself be pulled in a certain general direction. The closer he followed the instinct, the more acute it became.

He slowly began to focus in until he was able to see a home in a faraway land. He felt irresistibly pulled into the house by the spell and into the unexpected ruin of what looked like a child's bedroom. The spell gave him an unexpected thrill of joy when he caught sight of a familiar pattern. A large hemmed piece of the exact fabric he was looking for, simply left lying in a bin and enough to replace the entire torn panel of the cloak. He used his skills to physically pull the cloth to his physical body a half a world away and gradually came out of his trance to find the cloak fluttering with glee over the blanket lying in the sorcerer's lap.

"Come, my friend, let me put you back together again."

* * *

"Wong, while I really appreciate that we need to get the sanctums back and operating, would you mind if I took a day off? Living through a time loop to fend off a powerful being in the dark dimension was a little exhausting."

Wong maintained his look of unmoving judgement, before cracking a small smile and patting his friend on the back.

"Get some rest, you look like you haven't slept in years."

Stephen chuckled his gratitude and at the irony that he probably hadn't slept much in years as it was, between medical school, the accident, and with all his training in Kamar-Taj. Well, yes, he had physically slept, but he couldn't remember the last time he woke up genuinely feeling well-rested. He'd been able to subdue his nightmares through meditation techniques learned early in his training with Mordo and the Ancient One. He hoped the recent events wouldn't set him back into such dark visions.

He yawned as he walked up the stairs of the New York Sanctum to find his room. He showered and changed into pajamas, feeling a little more humanly ordinary without his robes. He felt a flutter as the Cloak of Levitation wrapped around shoulders on his path to the bed. Karl and the Ancient One had made a point that the cloak didn't choose many sorcerers to become attached to over the millennia, however Strange wasn't very amused since he was about to climb into bed.

"Thank you, but I really do need to sleep, do you mind going back to your display for the night? Or could I suggest a hanger in the closet if you want a break from floating?"

The cloak merely sat on his shoulders; a comfortable weight that Stephen could manipulate without any appearance of magic. That is, until he tried to remove it and the clasps refused to budge from his chest. He sank down onto the bed, too tired to fight with the piece of clothing anymore. His head slumped forward in exhaustion, he continued to talk to the cloak in a friendly sleep-deprived manner.

"Alright, fine, you can stay, but know that, while I respect you as more than a blanket, please don't wake me up if I start to drool or anything, I really need to sleep."

At his words, the cloak did nothing, so he turned off the light and laid down on the bed, wrapping the soft fabric around him. He settled for a single peaceful moment before he was hit with an overwhelming feeling of homecoming. The fabric of the cloak had felt remarkably familiar and he was struck by the memory of how drawn he'd been to the sight of it when he first arrived at the sanctum. He turned his light back on and held the cape up to the light, opening it to take a closer look at the lining. He instantly remembered the years he'd spent tracing the symbols and rows and columns of this very pattern on his own blanket.

The lining seemed to be patched and repaired in multiple places, a spot under the left arm being the most recent, although at least a decade old. He squeezed his eyes shut at how this was the most absurd thing out of the litany of absurd things he'd experienced in just this week alone. Humbled, he quietly whispered with uncharacteristically childlike hope, "You wouldn't by any chance have been patched with an old children's blanket in the past fifteen or so years, have you?"

The cloak lazily indicated to the recent patch. Stephen reached out gently to touch the specific part.

"No wonder you like me so much. You've got a part of the whole family sewn into you."

He let out along laugh before giving up his pride for the night, wrapping the cloak around him closely, and turning off the light. He thought briefly of the night his mother told him his blanket was full of magic and wondered if she had been more correct than even she knew. He slowly fell into a deep dreamless sleep, curling into the warmth of the fabric.

* * *

The next morning, Stephen woke late in the afternoon, feeling more well-rested than he ever had since he'd left for medical school. Perhaps he'd ask Wong if they had any records of the cloak's creation and history or at least knew about the previous wearer. Although, he might leave out why he was interested. The last thing he needed was Wong asking to see his baby pictures.


End file.
